Posted on 10/04/2001 12:12:37 PM PDT by LavaDog
NR's Melissa Seckora had the misfortune of seeing an important piece debut on National Review Online on the morning of September 11. Her story exposing the phony sources behind Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, an award-winning book critical of U.S. gun culture by Emory University historian Michael Bellesiles, normally would have attracted a great deal of attention. Instead, it became a minor concern as we all came to grips with the horror of mass terrorism.
Now there's been a stunning new development in the Bellesiles case: The head of Emory's history department is demanding that Bellesiles write a detailed defense of his book. "What is important is that he defend himself and the integrity of his scholarship immediately," said James Melton, according to yesterday's Boston Globe, which also printed a September 11 story on Bellesiles airing charges similar to NR's. "Depending upon his response, the university will respond appropriately."
That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of a colleague. And it gets worse: "If there is prima facie evidence of scholarly misconduct, the university has to conduct a thorough investigation. Whether it be a purely internal inquiry, or the university brings in distinguished scholars in the field, will depend on how Michael responds," said Melton.
Seckora, in fact, interviewed some of the "distinguished scholars" any such effort is likely to involve — including a few recommended to her by Bellesiles. Let's just say he doesn't fare well in their estimation. But how could he? Key sources for his claim that guns were a much less important part of early American culture than is commonly believed simply don't exist. Many of those he cites, in fact, were destroyed in San Francisco's 1906 earthquake. There's not a historian alive who's seen them.
Bellesiles now must explain how they wound up in his footnotes — and he told the Globe he'll do it in a future newsletter published by the Organization of American Historians.
He has his work cut out for him, thanks in part to the intrepid reporting of Seckora, whose article may be read here, or in the October 15, 2001, issue of National Review.
Larry Pratt interviews Author Clayton Cramer Deconstructing Latest Anti-Gun Mythmaker Michael BellesilesListen in RealAudio
06-09-2001
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Complete stinking fraud exposed for the forgery it is.
Lock and load!
They'll still be quoting him ten years from noe.
Complete stinking fraud exposed for the forgery it is.
Lock and load!
Needed to be said again.
Ten years ago, I was in a discussion group which included a professor. A topic came up, and I naively suggested to the prof that this might be a good research project.
His response was basicly "using what for funding?"
I then found out that, in academia today, no research gets done which is not funded from some outside source. This means that, you cannot start research until you have secured grant funding, and you are not going to get funding until you have convinced the grant providers that your research results are going to produce results that they will like.
This is what Emory University historian Michael Bellesiles had hoped for. Unfortunately, he choose to define the 2nd Amendmant which had been previously defined by the Founders of these United States. There is many papers written about their discussions as to why they decided that new America needed a 2nd Amendmant. These records do exist. Are you reading these Senators Boxer, Sienstein, Schumer, Kennedy, ..........?
Let me guess what happened to his original interview notes:
The dog ate it.
The maid threw it out.
It fell behind the refrigerator.
His kid sister used it in her paper-mache doll.
My remarks on that column were:
The book was just plain silly on its face.The Jonathans lived in a mainly agrarian society, surrounded by wilderness, with hostile French and aboriginals on their boundaries.
The demarcation line set by Crown proclamation in 1763 to define the Iroquios territories cut through the middle of what are now the states of New York and Pennsylvania.
The Jonathans needed their guns to augment their diet and to defend their homes.
As to probate: Why would anyone list such a common household item as a gun on a probate? Unless it was a lawyer in a town covering his own arse.
Simpler for the sons to simply take possession of the guns, or simply leave them hanging in the front room where they always were. Who wants to tell the government everything about your household effects?
Special pleading is intellectual dishonesty.
There were no claims for lost weapons, yet we know the Oneida had lots of weapons. They served as Scouts with the New York regiments, and they hunted for a living.
Just because they didn't claim they'd lost a gun or two didn't mean that they didn't have guns.
BTW, the State of New York betrayed these firm allies in later years by violating the federal law regarding sales of Indian property. Not only that, New York sold all that stolen land to illegal aliens.
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